Judd Apatow Breaks Down His Career, from 'Superbad' to 'Freaks and Geeks' | Vanity Fair

I always enjoy working with people you know when it's not their 40th movie people are great when it's their 40th movie but it's different when it's their first movie and they really want to score and they have so much energy and passion you know when you get to your 40th Harrison Ford movie he tends not to give you that time and he shouldn't paint Vanity Fair this is Judd Apatow and this is the timeline of my coming good morning Phil good morning right and how are we today oh thank god the rain just off day the first thing that I ever directed was the Larry Sanders Show I never had the courage to ask Gary to direct the Larry Sanders Show one day he just walked in my office and said you're doing the next one which was terrifying the weird thing was a few weeks before that we were doing the show about a psychic and a psychic was hanging around the office and reading different people and she said to me you're gonna have a flood at your house and you're gonna direct soon and then it rained and flooded my house and then two weeks later Gary said you're gonna direct the next one I saw that psychic for years once that psychic told us to be careful driving in Hawaii and it scared us so much and we went to Hawaii and never left the room failed you like my outfit yes oh I do isn't it fetching yeah that's not the word I'm looking for excuse me [Music] hey how Freaks and Geeks happened was I said to my good friend Paul Feig do you have any ideas and he said let me think about it and then one day he just handed me an envelope and it had Freaks and Geeks in it it never works out like that don't ever hand you a script that's great and you go alright I guess what this will make that while in production we thought it was going well and we really loved it but we also knew that some of the people who ran the network didn't like it so we always felt like it was gonna end at any moment and then it did but we shot the finale in the middle of our production because we were so sure that they're gonna cancel us in any moment that you know being neurotic we just shot it episodes before the season was over just in case the guillotine came down and in and thank God that we did what's the trash the place cuz they think they're drunk they won't [Music] this could be bad Thanks your supports awesome you guys it's just really great to have you around so I need the rent nor thought it was a pilot we did in 2002 I think it was about a bunch of people who wanted to be in show business who were struggling living in North Hollywood so it was Amy Poehler and her day job was working as judge Reinholds assistant Jason Segel who played Frankenstein on the Universal Studios tour and Kevin Hart who had a lot of money because he was in a beer commercial that was questionable in its contents we made this show probably mainly inspired by the vibe of Curb Your Enthusiasm ABC said they wants an edgy programming and we had January Jones in it and had a Mackay he was acting in it and we really had the best time making it but in the middle of making it we heard that ABC changed their theory about what they wanted the network to be and they wanted it to be more retro like Happy Days and while we were shooting we thought they're never ever gonna order this and they didn't I always thought they would call and go okay we don't want to do this show but we could tell all these people are gonna be stars and they never they never called they showed no interest in anybody this is really embarrassing for me but I don't have money to pay for the room right now that was hoping he could float me for a couple of days I think I was in love once really what was her name I don't remember that's not a good start but keep going Will Ferrell and Adam McKay wrote this script anchorman and they showed it to me and the first drafts were really hilarious and crazy it was about the anchor team flying to an anchorman convention the plane crashes and he wind up on the side of a mound and where they all are trying to survive and it almost becomes like the movie alive but with anchorman and we were trying to get made for years and slowly they started changing the story because nobody would make this crazy version of it I always thought that they should still make that version that at some point they should go back and do that I love lamp I love lamp you really want to know what love is yeah yes tell us they were nice you know and like you grabbed a woman's breasts and it's and you you feel it and it feels like bag of sand when you're touching it I was one of the producers of anchorman and I would watch Steve Carell and set every day and he was always so hysterical so one day I walked up to him and I said do you have any ideas about you being the star of the movie and then a few days later he welcomed to me and he said you know I was working on this sketch I never really figured out at Second City about a 40 year old virgin and then he said you know in the sketch it was like a poker game and everyone's selling sex stories and my character is clearly lying because he's never had sex and he's saying you know how when you touch a woman's breasts it feels like a bag of sand and you go down her pants and there's all the baby powder and I said I think this is something that we need to do one of the most fun parts of making the photo version was we were able to just put in a lot of people that we thought you know were great who were in giant stars yet so Jane Lynch played his boss and she was hysterical and then we had Mindy Kaling as Paul Rudd's ex-girlfriend who he was obsessed over and I think that was her first time in a movie Romany Malco with someone that you know we loved he did an independent movie with Paul Rudd called the chateaux and they were so funny together that we thought we should use them both in this movie cherry bed knob was a comedian that I used to always work with in the valley at the LA cabaret and we made him one of the bosses at the stereo store one of my favorite scenes is when he's just talking so filthy to Steve Carell cuz TV was always so funny just reacting to people being filthy so Seth Rogen was on the side writing up all these like dirty phrases and and handing him Jerry Benham rusty trombone any Dirty Sanchez please tiny Cincinnati bowtie Boosh I would do terrible disgusting things to hook up with jewels unforgivable things I hey man give my middle nut to start dating Becca that is it super bad began when I was working with Seth Rogen on Freaks and Geeks and he and he always talked about how him and his friend Evan Goldwyn had been writing a script since they were 13 or 14 years old and then after precincts was cancelled we were working on undeclared together and we did a table read with the cast of undeclared reading super bad and it was really hilarious but for years nobody had any interest in making it and at one point point of a producer joined us because we thought maybe we're not powerful enough so he got this powerful producer to jump on the project to help us and then suddenly he got hired to be the head of a studio and we thought well now we're gonna get to make it and the first decision he made as the head of the studio was to not make the movie that he was the producer of we started the casting process with our director Greg Mottola and he loved Michael Cera as did Seth and Evan and we were just all in love with him but it was really hard to figure out who was as good as Michael Cera Michael Cera is the greatest of the world and then one day we just kept frustrated because we couldn't figure out who to cast and Jonah was just hanging around on the set of knock down and we always looked at anything when you want to shave really good and put yourself on tape and then we realized it was always a shave away from playing high school so nuts and walking in by the alcohol what if I don't feel like it anymore Seth what don't kill you what I'm pregnant with the motion with a baby you're the father how long have happened was I was sitting with staff and Seth was pitching me some ideas for movies and they were big science fiction type of ideas and I was trying to convince him that he was so funny that he didn't need anything like that I was trying to kill his imagination so I said you know Seth you're funny just standing there you don't need any of that you could just like get someone pregnant and that's enough for a movie and then we went wait a second it was great working with seven as the lead I mean I think that people always work harder when it's you know they're big you know lead break so I always enjoy working with people you know when it's not their 40th movie people are great when it's their 40th movie but it's different when it's their first movie and they really want to score and they have so much energy and passion so you know when we audition people to play what became Katherine Heigl's part set thread with every single woman who came in four months and that's part of how he developed his character was by reading with a hundred different people and you know when you get to your 40th Harrison Ford movie he tends not to give you that time and he shouldn't okay I couldn't take it I can't raise this baby alone number and it gets all you get it so you don't understand how it works I don't want to shop at old lady's stores I don't want to go to Jeju land Chico's and Ann Taylor Loft I'm not ready yet any two more years there's so insane it kind of makes sense we were trying to figure out a way to talk about you know that moment when you turn 40 and you look at your life and you you just have to assess how it's going and we came up with this idea that they would you know have birthdays and in a similar timeframe and it would have some sort of fight and nervous breakdown which would make everything bubble up to the surface and you know we were really lucky to get a chance to work with Albert Brooks and John Lithgow on the movie that was very very exciting having them around that was the dream I didn't even think it would be possible to get them in any of my movies happy birthday and go yourself hey see you when the Cubs win the pennant I got to work with Maude and iris you know they were a little bit older and so it was fun to you know find a way to show you know their sibling rivalry on screen and sometimes I was just setting up multiple cameras giving them a subject and letting them actually have a fight and then Paul and Leslie always have such hilarious chemistry as a couple and I would get such a kick out of you know coming up with scenarios that would make us laugh and a lot of it was based on things and our friends we're talking about we were talking about at the time about you know the flashpoints of a couple you know what drives each other crazy about their behavior the most fun about making movies like this is 40 is working with Leslie you know we collaborate on all the scenes and all the yes and we do get the chance to sit with each other and you know come up with comedic takes you know these different situations that have driven each other cause the funny thing about that movie is the poster is Paul on and iPad on the toilet and at the time in 2011 the joke of you know an annoying husband is always sneaking away to get a break and play video games on his iPad was kind of a new joke no one had really made that joke before about sneaking off to be on your phone and now it's our entire lives [Music] when we were working on Freaks and Geeks I loved working with Jason Segel you know he really made me laugh and he was so creative and smart I kept saying to him I don't know if you're gonna get a movie that's perfect for you as the lead cuz you're kind of like a weird guy I don't know if you'll match him perfectly scripts that are laying around town I think you probably need to write it to show people what you can do then one day he pitch me the story for Forgetting Sarah Marshall and he wasn't a big star at that moment he was kind of between things in his career he was just getting going on How I Met Your Mother and I said you know to get the studio to make this the script has to be unbelievably great and Nick Stoller who was a writer and undeclared incentive and I direct that and I'll help him with the script I'll try to you know give him notes and then see what I can do and the script was unbelievable and then they let him make that movie and then they've all kind of hang out in Hawaii for many months because [Music] on everything simple after forgetting sarah marshall nick solar and i you know we're so taken by russell brand we were trying to think of something else to do with russell obviously we wanted to do something else with Jonah Hill Nick had this idea about having Russell play a rock star and Jonah Hill playing someone at the record company who has to deal with this out-of-control rock star our problem was that Jonah played a waiter and Forgetting Sarah Marshall so it made no sense that if we had Russell played the same character that he played Sarah Marshall would and Jonah be the waiter and we shot something when we shot to get him to the Greek where we reference him as having been a waiter in his past then we cut it out and just decided who cares about logic ever yeah you that's something you pretty much you can just kind of dip your toes into you know we kind of dipped our toes in the murderer like six guys for years Seth and Evan and I were trying to get super bad made and nobody would pay for it and I was trying to think of something else that they could do that might be more commercial and I always had this idea about a pothead action movie because I love true romance and there was that scene with Brad Pitt where all the assassins come in and he's really high it was one of my favorite scenes and I thought I wish that was the whole movie I wish you followed Brad Pitt out and he was on the run from the assassin so I said why why don't you guys try to come up with a movie based on that thought and Seth and Evan wrote this amazing script and then we found out that that was way less commercial than super bad and everyone said no to that also and only after Superbad did well did somebody say you guys have anything else and we were like well we have this other thing that they would were checks all the time and that was a pineapple Express I shot someone who was already dead so that doesn't really count as a murder but you hit it with your car I'm told that night you killed it why are you telling me this George cuz I want you to possibly do me a favor okay yeah what kill me what for a long time before fighting people I was trying to think about how to make a movie about why we like making comedy and how do we feel about it are we crazy are we ego maniacs are we paying some sort of price for this obsession is it making us jerks and I also wanted to write about observing my mom when she was sick and how when she didn't think she was going to live she seemed happier and then when she thought the medicine was working she got very neurotic again and caught up in life and I would see that happened time and time again over many years so the movie became about you know can we accept the wisdom that being ill provides us and one day I realized oh maybe that's the same movie as the movie about why are we in comedy what does it mean I talked about dinner early in the process of writing funny people so he was a big part of helping me develop the idea and it was always my dream to work with that and we were roommates when we were kids when we were first starting out in standup I had never gotten the chance to direct him in a movie before and one of the great pleasures of my life was just how fun he was to work with and what a great actor he was you know he was always a great friend but it was the first time I got to see up close you know how brilliant he is in his work I always knew that Eric Bana was funny I had seen online these crazy sketches he to do he had some sort of variety show in Australia and he used to do Arnold Schwarzenegger and he had this really hysterical Tom Cruise impression that he did so I was very excited to put him in a comedy because he was really giving he's incredibly you know serious parts intense parts but he hadn't shown his comedic side yet in a movie and and he was so fun to work with he's really funny mmm-hmm I don't know wise movies aren't funny though that's weird it's not and then we also laugh because we feel like we're such goofy idiots so when my a real actor shows up who knows what he's doing who's way better looking than all of us it always makes us laugh like look it professional a professionals here today working with us how did this happen give me like a night to think about it ha yeah you had sex with him he had a an adult sleepover oh did you let him sleep over in your mouth there's a huge fan of Kristen Wiggs I saw in the first episode that she was on Saturday Night Live and she healed on the first episode she was hot which nobody does usually and usually takes people a long time to get comfortable on the show so we put her and knocked up and she played an executive at the e-channel and she was so funny in these scenes of alan tudyk giving katherine heigl all this awful insulting advice and her part didn't exist it was all made up by her in improvisation then we worked together on walk hard she played Dewey Cox his first wife who didn't think he was gonna make it so we were always looking for opportunities to work with her and Wendy her in any mo they wanted to do a movie about a maid of honor who can't really afford to even do all the events and the things that she means to do for her friend and how it made her feel bad that everyone seemed to be doing better in life than her and at the time we didn't we didn't even think it was a movie that was a female-driven comedy never even occurred to us we just thought oh we're making a movie with Kristen and then when it was done people started saying oh isn't this great a female-driven comedy and we're like oh I guess I mean that really wasn't something that was like on our minds we just thought let's make a movie with all these hilarious women we didn't think it had any meaning we didn't think it was significant but then afterwards I think it became important that it was such a big hit and was so funny because I hope it opened up opportunities for other people where professors Hannah professors we can't keep bankrolling your groovy lifestyle my groovy lifestyle somebody slipped me a DVD of this movie called Tiny Furniture that Lena Dunham made and I didn't know who Lena Dunham was I didn't even know that she was the person in the movie I thought that she was the filmmaker of the movie and then when the movie ended it said you know written and directed by Lena Dunham starring Lena Donovan I was like oh my god so that that girl did all of this and I felt a real connection to her you know she she does very personal work she you know she's so funny and open and brave and I feel like a lot of the work I did on the king of Staten Island was inspired by lessons I learned from collaborating with her because she was always so courageous about really you know baring her soul in all these scripts and all these stories look at me he never ever texts you back maybe you should call him I mean didn't you say texting's like the lowest form of communication on the pillar of chat oh this is Amy I think you butt-dialed me no no IIIi dialed you with my fingers she say I wish I was a giant fan of Amy Schumer's from her stand-up and I heard her on the Howard Stern Show talking about you know her family and her relationships and I asked her if she wanted to work on a movie and at first we worked on a different movie for a while and then one day we just sat down and we started talking about relationships and Amy came up with the idea for trainwreck and you know it was one of the great fun experiences we got to work with Colin Quinn who played her dad who's someone that I did a pilot with you know 15 years before who was the biggest star we knew when I was a kid he was on remote control and he was he would talk to us and he was a comedian we looked up to so it was great to work with Colin Quinn Bill Hader is somebody that has been in a few of our movies and it was real fun to try to have him play this leading romantic lead which he always found funny he thought it was a weird thing that he would be romantically I found him romantic but before he got the part I went to New York with Bill and had him and Amy hang out and have dinner almost like a date and I sat at the table and just watched them and he said it was the most uncomfortable thing he's ever gone through was just me creepily deciding if they were sexy together you guys make love oh my god answer me yeah sexual intercourse everybody what do you think the employee discount is at the dollar store there you are you think it's just take it crashing began when Pete Holmes had a talk show and he asked if he could come do a sketch where he pitched me movie ideas and in the sketch she's pitching me tons of terrible ideas for movies and we're improvising and in the improvisation I said but seriously Pete what's the idea do you have any ideas for like a movie or a TV show like come on what's the personal idea tell me the idea and in the sketch he said well I was a young comedian and I was married and my wife cheated on me and then I was religious and I went to New York to try to be a comedian I had to crash with a lot of people's couches and in the sketch I said yeah no that's too sad that's too sad no one wants to see that but then six months later he called lady and he said I kind of really do want to do that idea who was talking about it in the sketch and that joke became the show I thought maybe I could go on earlier you know while the crowd is still here nah what do you mean not please welcome the lovely Garry Shandling ten years in sin years since you were here is that remarkable it's remarkable and anyway is there a problem the Zen diaries of Garry Shandling began when you know I was helping his family go through his belongings and he had all these incredible journals and the memorabilia from his life and these books with thousands of jokes and when we held a memorial service for him I cut these little five minute documentary pieces about him and pretty quickly I realized there was a great documentary to be made about our friend and I got you know permission from his family and I called HBO and I said I think I think this might need to be two parts it might need to be like the Bob Dylan documentary and I said you know how come Bob Dylan's worth for four and a half hours Gary's worth same amount of time as Bob Dylan and they said well if it works at that length well we'll do it and and that's that's what we did I was excited that it got such a great reception because I really felt like there were all these ideas and Gary wanted to share with the world that were related to his spirituality to all the work he had done to try to heal himself to focus on loving-kindness and Buddhism and he was just beginning to understand how to find a way through art to talk to people about that so in my mind I always felt like this movie was hopefully what Gary was trying to express to people as you grow you have to find a new purpose and intention for doing what you do or you bro I want to become a real tattoo artist your work is mad and consist them Obama a right I love your tattoo is this is my favorite I met Pete Davidson when I was casting trainwreck I said to Amy Schumer who's funny she said there's this kid Pete Davis and he's 20 years old he's way funnier than he has any right to be at that age so we gave him a very very brief cameo in the movie and Bill Hader enjoyed working with him so much of the next thing he called him and said I'm gonna recommend you to Lorne Michaels for Saturday Night Live and then he auditioned any gotten Saturday Night Live's over the next few years we talked about one script that he worked on with his partner Dave Cyrus and then after a few years we realized maybe that wasn't the one and we slowly started talking about this idea which became the king of Staten Island the king of that Island is made up you know it's fiction but we like to think of it as emotionally truthful because it is about a lot of what Pete went through in his life you know his father was a firefighter who died on 9/11 and that was something that was very very difficult for him to deal with as a kid and throughout his life and in this movie it's a bit of an imagining of what might have happened to Pete if he didn't find comedy because at about 15 years old he started going to comedy clubs and through comedy and getting on stage and travelling around uni became a very ambitious driven person but in the movie he's someone that didn't find that interest and he's just sitting around smoking pot hanging out with his friends and he's about to get in a lot of trouble in the movie his mom played by Marissa Tomei hasn't really dated since his father died and she starts dating a fireman and this forces Pete's character to have to deal with all the issues and obstacles that have held him back in his life and you know what we were trying to do is hopefully a really funny movie but a movie which talks about grief and how people and families get through that kind of traumatic event recently I was talking to Mindy Kaling and she said you know I think in all your movies somebody's stuck like they're stuck it's about them getting unstuck and I never thought of that my entire career that that's what it was and I thought I think she's right I think Mindy Kaling and understands me more than I understand me and then I felt really weird that's it Vanity Fair that was a timeline of my career I am exhausted from reliving it I hope your day is good be well be safe I'll be here for the next year

Channel: Vanity Fair

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Id: gta2XsvEPrk

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020